Jun

8

On a weekend trip.

1. We head to the Watchtower by the Brooklyn Bridge and they don't have the sign up any more that says, "the dead will rise". But it's there in my mind from the 1970s still. And eventually it will apply to tech.

2. Williamsburg itself is thriving with all the old factories now being converted to condos and family residences and boutique shops. If there is a good infrastructure and the buildings are strong, they will eventually find a good and productive use. The same thing applies to Coney Island where the crowds there now rival what they were in my day in the (I look around 3 times ) thirties. How to differentiate this from the situation in Detroit where the buildings sell for $50 or so. Is it just the unions?

3. We go to Zura's loft where hundreds of immigrants are doing sculptures out of metal working that they learned in Russia and making a good living, and they build model motorcycles and chandeliers among other things in the Mill building which was converted from a Mill 100 years ago when I was a boy. The immigrants are the dynamic entrepreneurs that make jobs for everyone and do things that enable us to augment our horizons.

4. We go to the Hall of Science in Flushing and the circus science is very good, and it shows that things are seldom what they seem. All the contortions and balancing can be learned with practice and family training. A contest between two balancing acts in Niagara Falls in the 1870s shows the importance of competition. One of the balancers had no hesitation in carrying Prince William across on his back as he crossed Niagara on a one inch thick tight rope successfully and dipped down to get a drink from a passing paddle wheeler for sustenance. The unusual is always the usual for the market, and what seems impossible will ultimately happen.

5. As we go home, our door snaps open and grazes a Russian's car, and he extorts us for hundreds as time is not meaningful to such. They were laying in wait for such to happen like a spider in his web. Time has a different value to all, and along with their low service rate, is the key determinant of why the Asians have and will surpass us.

6. "Times have changed"

"In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now the Good one knows. Anything goes".

Aubrey and I saw Anything Goes.

I am thinking of 10 lessons we can learn from Anything Goes. You can help if you will. The first lesson is that in old times if you beat earnings estimates, nay, if you just reported a positive quarter, it was enough, a glimpse of a rise was sufficient. Now you have to beat the earnings estimate, you have to beat the sales estimate, you have to give an upbeat guidance for the future, and your margins have to improve.

7. Also, like in Anything Goes, the crooks are considered honorary captains of the ship. Many admire Madoff 's market making operation and his capacity to lead the auditors to think he was going to be the next head of the agency. The heiress Hope Harcourt (any relation to Jov?) has to marry the wealthy English Lord because her family has lost everything in the depression. However, her father jumped off the ledge of the stock exchange like a Yale man, so his death was honorable.
 

To be continued.

Rocky Humbert adds: 

For what it's worth, the Jehovah's Witnesses sold the Watchtower building some years ago, and it's now an NYU dorm. Notably, they didn't replace the "Dead Will Rise" with ""Perstando et Praestando," …

The lack of signage might be due to infighting between the dead (and not rising) faculty of Brooklyn Polytechnic (whose campus was absorbed by NYU)… as they are still lobbying for Virtus Victrix Fortunae. 

Useless fact: Brooklyn Polytechnic may be the only US university that produced Nobel Laureates AND went out of business.

Jason Ruspini adds: 

Have they have already surpassed us? It looks more like American/European technologies and institutions have just diffused over to their many people. What are the innovative contributions to world society coming out of Asia? They have some tall buildings and big casinos.

If long-termism manifests itself as rigidity, that is a weakness. Not to extrapolate the Fukushima situation to all of Asia, but it does give a general impression of flimsiness under a facade of success and technical prowess. (Japan needed our robots. They will never live that down.)

Math/science that is actually innovative will win in the long-run, but America hasn't been bowed yet.


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